Quicklinks:
The full solution to today’s crossword that appears in the New York Times
The full solution to today’s SYNDICATED New York Times crossword that appears in all other publications
THEME: THE BOUNCING BALL … the circled letters spell out THE BOUNCING BALL as it “bounces” across the grid, and the two themed answers are places where one can “follow the bouncing ball” i.e.
– KARAOKE SCREEN
– PING-PING TABLE
COMPLETION TIME: 7m 37s
ANSWERS I MISSED: 0
Today’s Wiki-est, Amazonian Googlies
Across
1. Many Eastern Europeans : SLAVS
Slavic people are in the majority in communities that cover over half of Europe. The Slavic ethnic group is so large that it is normally divided into three sub-groups
– the West Slavic (including Czechs and Poles)
– the East Slavic (including Russians and Ukrainians)
– the South Slavic (including Bulgarian and Serbs)
“Good Will Hunting” was the movie that gave both Matt Damon and Ben Affleck their big break in movies, and deservedly so. Affleck and Damon are actually distant cousins who lived two blocks from each other in Cambridge, Massachusetts where the pair spent their teen years. The two friends wrote the film’s screenplay and of course took starring roles, alongside Robin Williams and Minnie Driver. Affleck and Damon won an Academy Award for the screenplay. What a great success story, eh?
Arthur Ashe was a professional tennis player from Richmond, Virginia. In his youth he found himself having to travel great distances to play against Caucasian opponents due to the segregation that still existed in his home state. He was rewarded for his dedication by being selected for the 1963 US Davis Cup team, the first African America player to be so honored. He continued to run into trouble because of his ethnicity though, and in 1968 was denied entry into South Africa to play in the South African Open. In 1979 Ashe suffered a heart attack and had bypass surgery. He had further heart surgery in 1983, and contracted HIV from blood transfusions during the procedure. Ashe passed away in 1993, due to complications from AIDS.
![Arthur Ashe: Citizen of the World [VHS]](https://ws.amazon.com/widgets/q?MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&ID=AsinImage&WS=1&Format=_SL160_&ASIN=630334772X&tag=wesneyoticrso-20)
16. Bread for a gyro : PITA
A gyro is a traditional Greek dish, a sandwich made with pita bread containing meat, tomato, onion and tzatziki (a yogurt and cucumber sauce). The meat for gyros is usually roasted on a tall vertical spit, and is sliced from the spit as required. The name “gyro” comes from the modern Greek word “gyros” meaning “circle”, a reference to the meat turning as it is grilled, in a rotating, circular motion.
Amoco is an abbreviation for the American Oil Company. Amoco was the first oil company to introduce gasoline tanker trucks and drive through-filling stations. I wonder did they know what they were starting?
18. Wife of Jacob : LEAH
Leah is the first wife of Jacob, and mother of six of the twelve tribes of Israel (as she was mother of six of Jacob’s sons … as well as one daughter).
“I Can See for Miles” is the biggest selling single for the Who in the United States, although I doubt it is the track that is heard most often. Three songs from the Who are used as theme music for the three very successful CSI television series.
The Who’s hit “Who Are You” is used as the theme song for the TV show “CSI”. Old hits from the Who are also used as theme songs for the CSI spin-off shows, “CSI: New York” (theme: “Baba O’Riley”) and “CSI: Miami” (theme: “Won’t Get Fooled Again”). The Who played all three “CSI” songs during the half-time show at the 2010 Super Bowl.
20. One place to follow the object named in the circled letters (reading left to right) : KARAOKE SCREEN
Follow THE BOUNCING BALL …
Kara-te, means “open hand”, and Kara-oke, means “open orchestra”.
23. A/C stat : BTU
In the world of heating, ventilation and air conditioning, the power of a heating or cooling unit can be measured in British Thermal Units. This dated unit is basically the amount of energy required to heat a pound of water so that the water’s temperature increases by one degree Fahrenheit.
Senator Hannibal Hamlin of Maine was chosen to run as Vice Presidential candidate at the bottom of the Republican ticket with Abraham Lincoln in the 1860 Presidential race. By the time Lincoln and Hamlin won the election, they had never even been in the same room together, not once (times certainly have changed!). Hamlin served with Lincoln throughout his first term as President, but for the election for Lincoln’s second term he was dropped from the ticket, as Lincoln chose Andrew Johnson of Tennessee instead. Lincoln was looking ahead to the need for reconciliation with the South at the end of the Civil War.
![Historic Print (L): [Hannibal Hamlin, head-and-shoulders portrait, facing slightly to left]](https://ws.amazon.com/widgets/q?MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&ID=AsinImage&WS=1&Format=_SL160_&ASIN=B003HXJ51M&tag=wesneyoticrso-20)
Carlos Santana is a Mexican American rock guitar player, famous for heading the band called Santana that melded rock music with Latin and African themes.
32. These, in Tours : CES
Tours is the largest city in the Centre region of France. It is said that the people of Tours speak the “purest” form of French in the whole country, and when spoken by a local it is also said to be free of any accent.
34. Zenith : ACME
The “acme” is the highest point coming from the Greek “akme”, which has the same meaning.
The nadir is the direction pointing immediately below a particular location (through to the other side of the Earth for example). The opposite direction, the direction pointing immediately above, is called the zenith.
The verb “to chap” means “to crack”, and has been used to mean a crack in the skin since way back in the 14th century.
40. ___ Highway (route through Whitehorse, Yukon) : ALCAN
The Alaska Highway is also known as the Alaska-Canadian Highway or ALCAN Highway. A highway connecting the contiguous United States to Alaska was proposed in the twenties, but the Canadian authorities didn’t believe the project had much merit as the road would be used by very few of its citizens. The perceived importance of the route increased during WWII, and President Roosevelt deemed the road a strategic necessity so he made a deal with Canada. The cost of construction would be born by the US, but the road and related facilities were to be handed over to Canada at the end of the war. The project was accelerated when the Japanese invaded and occupied Kiska and Attu Islands in the Aleutians. The road of course has been improved and is still in use today, and forms part of what is popularly known as the Pan-American Highway, which runs from Prudhoe Bay, Alaska to the south of Argentina or Chile, depending on how the route is defined.
43. Scottish hillside : BRAE
“Brae” is a lowland Scots word for the slope or brow of a hill.
44. Ancient Asia Minor region : IONIA
Asia Minor is also known as Anatolia, and is the geographic part of Asia that protrudes out into the west, towards Europe. It is roughly equivalent to modern-day Turkey.
The ancient region of Ionia was located in present day Turkey. Ionia was prominent in the days of Ancient Greece although it wasn’t a unified state, but rather a collection of tribes. The tribal confederacy was more based on religious and cultural similarities rather than a political or military alliance. Nowadays we often refer to this arrangement as the Ionian League.
“SimCity” is a very clever computer game, in which players build and grow cities and societies by creating the conditions necessary for people (the Sims) to move in and thrive. “SimCity” first came out in 1989, and to this day it is consistently ranked as one of the greatest computer games of all time.
54. Old-fashioned paper copies : DITTOS
“Ditto” was originally used in Italian (from Tuscan dialect) to avoid repetition of the names of months in a series of dates. It’s just another wonderful import from that lovely land …
56. Carrier to Copenhagen : SAS
SAS, formerly known as Scandinavian Airlines System, is the flag carrier of three countries: Denmark, Norway and Sweden.
Follow THE BOUNCING BALL …
Ping-pong is called table tennis in the UK, where the sport originated in the 1880s. It started of as an after-dinner activity among the elite, called “wiff-waff”. To play, books were stacked in the center of a table as a “net”, two more books served as “”rackets”, and the ball used was actually a golf ball. The game evolved over time, with the rackets being upgraded to the lids of cigar boxes and the ball becoming a champagne cork (how snooty is that?). Eventually the game was produced commercially, and the sound of the ball hitting the rackets of the day was deemed to be a “ping” and a “pong”, giving the sport its name.
I think that the oft-quoted story may be true that the term SPAM, used for unwanted email, is taken from a “Monty Python” sketch. In the sketch (which I’ve seen) the dialog is taken over by the word SPAM, a play on the glut of canned meat in the markets in Britain after WWII. So SPAM is used for the glut of emails that takes over online communication. I can just imagine nerdy, Internet types adopting something from a “Monty Python” sketch to describe an online phenomenon …
66. Jacques of “Mon Oncle” : TATI
Jacques Tati was a very famous filmmaker in France. “Mon Oncle” was an Oscar-winning film that he released in 1958.
“The Wiz”, the 1975 musical, was written by Charlie Smalls, and is an African-American version of Baum’s “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz”. The film adaptation was released in 1978, starring Diana Ross and Michael Jackson, with Jackson playing the Scarecrow. I haven’t seen it. “The Wizard of Oz” scares me … the flying monkeys creep me out. There, I’ve admitted it in public …
Down
1. Pierre’s state: Abbr. : S DAK
Here’s an old chestnut of a trivia question for you … what’s the only state capital in the Union in which the name of the capital and the name of its state share no common letters? You guessed it … Pierre, South Dakota …
2. Buddhist monk : LAMA
“Lama” is a Tibetan word, meaning “chief” or “high priest”.
3. Love, in 51-Down : AMOR
(51. Madrid’s land, to natives : ESPANA)
5. Haughty sorts : SNOOTS
“Snoot” is a variant of “snout” and is a word that originated in Scotland. The derivative “snooty”, an adjective to describe a “high-hat”, someone very haughty, started out as “snouty” back in the 1850s. The idea is that someone who is snooty, or snouty, tends to look down his or her nose at the rest of the world.
Dale Evans was the stage name of actress and singer Lucille Wood Smith, famous as the third wife of Roy Rogers. Evans was from Uvalde, Texas, and had a rough start in life. She eloped with her first husband when she was just 14 years old, and had her first child at 15. That first marriage ended in divorce when she was 17 in 1929, the same year she started on her second marriage. Roy Rogers was Evans’ fourth husband and they married in 1947, a marriage that lasted for 51 years
until Rogers passed away in 1998.
8. Dance related to the mambo : CHA-CHA
I think this is technically an error, as the dance is correctly called a “cha-cha-cha”, not a “cha-cha”.
The cha-cha-cha is a Latin dance with origins in Cuba, where it was introduced by composer Enrique Jorrin in 1953.
9. Iran’s capital : TEHRAN
Tehran is the capital of Iran and the largest city in the Middle East, with a population of about 8.5 million. Iran has been around a long time, so Tehran is actually the country’s 31st national capital would you believe? We are only babies over here in the US …
10. Sales talk : SPIEL
A spiel is a lengthy speech or argument designed to persuade, perhaps a sales pitch. “Spiel” comes to us from German, either directly (“spiel” is the German for “play”) or via the Yiddish “shpil”.
The capital city of Malaysia is Kuala Lumpur, very often abbreviated to K.L. The name “Kuala Lumpur” translates into English as “muddy estuary”. Famously, K.L. is home to the spectacular Petronas Twin Towers, currently the tallest twin towers in the world, and the tallest of any building from 1998 to 2004.
22. Slate, e.g., briefly : E-MAG
“Slate” is an online magazine founded in 1996. It was originally owned by Microsoft and was part of the MSN offering. The magazine has been available for free since 1999 (it is ad supported) and has been owned by the Washington Post Company since 2004.
25. Katmandu native : NEPALI
Although Katmandu is the capital city of the lofty nation of Nepal, it sits in a bowl-shaped valley so is only at an elevation of 4,600 ft. Air pollution is a huge problem in the city. Industry and residents launch a lot of smog into the air, and given the surrounding geography and climate, any pollution blown away during the day tends to fall back into the valley at night.
38. Gridiron carriers: Abbr. : RBS
We never used the word “gridiron” when I was growing up (meaning a grill used for cooking food over an open fire). So, maybe I am excused for finding out fairly recently that a football field gridiron is so called because the layout of yard lines over the field looks like a gridiron used in cooking!
41. French friend : AMI
“Ami” is the French word for “friend”.
42. Note on a Chinese menu : NO MSG
Monosodium glutamate is the sodium salt of a naturally-occurring (and non-essential) amino acid, glutamic acid. It is used widely as a flavor enhancer, particularly in many Asian cuisines. Whether or not it is harmful seems to be still under debate. I say that something produced in a test tube shouldn’t be in our food …
50. Immobilize : HOGTIE
The hogtie was first used on pigs, and involves the tying together of all four limbs in order to render the animal immobile. On a pig, or any other four legged animal, the limbs are obviously tied in front. To hogtie a human the hands are usually tied behind the back and joined to a rope binding the ankles.
51. Madrid’s land, to natives : ESPANA
Madrid is the largest city in Spain and its capital, located very close to the geographical center of the country.
52. Minor despot : SATRAP
“Satrap” is an old Persian word for a provincial governor. In modern usage in the English, a satrap is a world leader who is heavily influenced by a superior power.
Worcestershire Sauce is a variant of a fermented fish sauce that has been around since the days of the Roman Empire. The modern sauce was developed and marketed by Messrs. Lea and Perrins in the city of Worcester, then in the county of Worcestershire, hence the name. We vegans aren’t supposed to touch it, as it contains anchovies! Oh, and “Worcestershire” is pronounced “wooster-sheer” …
59. Siouan people : OTOS
The Otoe (also Oto) Native American tribe originated in the Great Lakes region as part of the Winnebago or Siouan tribes. The group that would become the Otoe broke away from the Winnebago and migrated southwestwards ending up in the Great Plains. In the plains the Otoe adopted a semi-nomadic lifestyle dependent on the horse, with the American bison becoming central to their diet.
The BLT (bacon, lettuce and tomato) is the second most popular sandwich in the US, after the plain ham sandwich.
64. Place to get a mudbath or massage : SPA
The word “spa” migrated into English from Belgium, as Spa is the name of a health resort there. The name “Spa” comes from the Walloon word “espa” meaning “spring, fountain”.
For the sake of completion, here is a full listing of all the answers:
Across
1. Many Eastern Europeans : SLAVS
6. Air passage : DUCT
10. Tiff : SPAT
14. “Good Will Hunting” star Matt : DAMON
15. Arthur with a Queens stadium named after him : ASHE
16. Bread for a gyro : PITA
17. BP gas brand : AMOCO
18. Wife of Jacob : LEAH
19. “___ See for Miles” (song by the Who) : I CAN
20. One place to follow the object named in the circled letters (reading left to right) : KARAOKE SCREEN
23. A/C stat : BTU
24. Hannibal ___, vice president under Abraham Lincoln : HAMLIN
26. Golf peg : TEE
29. Artist whose 1999 hit “Smooth” was #1 for 12 weeks : SANTANA
32. These, in Tours : CES
34. Zenith : ACME
36. Untruth : LIE
37. Something with x and y axes : GRAPH
39. Roughen in cold weather : CHAP
40. ___ Highway (route through Whitehorse, Yukon) : ALCAN
43. Scottish hillside : BRAE
44. Ancient Asia Minor region : IONIA
46. Medical care grp. : HMO
47. Buy’s opposite : SELL
48. Sleuth, in slang : TEC
49. Computer game with virtual people : THE SIMS
53. Be sick : AIL
54. Old-fashioned paper copies : DITTOS
56. Carrier to Copenhagen : SAS
58. Another place to follow the object named in the circled letters : PING-PONG TABLE
64. E-mail filter’s target : SPAM
66. Jacques of “Mon Oncle” : TATI
67. Governed : RULED
68. Top of the head : PATE
69. Get ___ the ground floor : IN ON
70. Had a role on stage : ACTED
71. Wowed : AWED
72. “___ On Down the Road” (“The Wiz” song) : EASE
73. Like mosquitoes : PESKY
Down
1. Pierre’s state: Abbr. : S DAK
2. Buddhist monk : LAMA
3. Love, in 51-Down : AMOR
4. Words, informally : VOCAB
5. Haughty sorts : SNOOTS
6. Cowgirl Evans : DALE
7. Puts to work : USES
8. Dance related to the mambo : CHA-CHA
9. Iran’s capital : TEHRAN
10. Sales talk : SPIEL
11. Outdoor eating place where you might lay a blanket : PICNIC AREA
12. One thing ___ time : AT A
13. Brown from the beach : TAN
21. ___ Lumpur, Malaysia : KUALA
22. Slate, e.g., briefly : E-MAG
25. Katmandu native : NEPALI
26. Unspoken, as an understanding : TACIT
27. Reverberated : ECHOED
28. Release from slavery : EMANCIPATE
30. Nothing : NIL
31. Computer whizzes : TECHS
33. Turtle’s “home” : SHELL
35. Prefix with center : EPI
38. Gridiron carriers: Abbr. : RBS
41. French friend : AMI
42. Note on a Chinese menu : NO MSG
45. Abbr. before a name on top of a memo : ATTN
50. Immobilize : HOGTIE
51. Madrid’s land, to natives : ESPANA
52. Minor despot : SATRAP
55. Measured by a stopwatch : TIMED
57. Worcestershire ___ : SAUCE
59. Siouan people : OTOS
60. WXY, on a phone : NINE
61. Sandwiches that are definitely not kosher, in brief : BLTS
62. Onionlike soup ingredient : LEEK
63. Spin zone? : EDDY
64. Place to get a mudbath or massage : SPA
65. Furry foot : PAW